Not Dead Enough (49 page)

She then picked up a pen and proceeded to write something.

The court began to empty. Grace stepped out from behind his pew, satisfied. But as he walked past the dock, Bishop spoke to him.

‘May I please have a quick word, Detective Superintendent?’

Lloyd sprang from his pew and positioned himself between them. ‘I don’t think that’s advisable,’ he said to his client.

‘You haven’t done such a good job yourself,’ Bishop replied angrily. Then he turned to Roy Grace. ‘Please, I didn’t do it. Please believe me,’ he implored. ‘There is somebody out there who has killed two women. My darling wife and another good friend of mine. Don’t give up looking for that person just because I’m locked away. Please!’

‘Mr Bishop!’ Leighton Lloyd admonished. ‘Don’t say any more.’

Grace left the courtroom with Bishop’s words ringing in his ears. He’d heard this kind of last-minute, desperation plea before, from villains who were guilty as hell.

But all the same, he suddenly felt a deep sense of unease.

105

Brendan Duigan had alerted Roy Grace to a problem at the planning meeting, in advance of the six-thirty joint briefing for Operations Chameleon and Mistral.

So straight after his introduction, and his brief summary of the events of the day, Grace informed the key members of the two investigating teams, who were crammed into the conference room at Sussex House, that a time-line issue, connecting Brian Bishop to Sophie Harrington’s murder, had arisen. He turned to DC Corbin, one of Duigan’s team members, and asked her to give her report.

Adrienne Corbin, who was dressed in denim dungarees over an orange T-shirt, was short and sturdy, with the build of a tomboy. The twenty-eight-year-old detective had a butch haircut and a round, blunt face that reminded Grace of a pug. She looked more aggressive than she really was and turned out to be a surprisingly nervous speaker, he observed, as she addressed this large group.

‘I have pieced together the movements of Brian Bishop during the afternoon and evening of Friday 4 August from information supplied to me by family liaison officer WPC Buckley, from a Hove Streamline taxi driver, Mr Mark Tuckwell, from CCTV footage obtained from Brighton Police Monitoring, as well as from civilian sources, Bishop’s mobile phone call records and from a plot of mobile phone cell masts, provided by British Telecom, indicating the geographical movements of Bishop’s phone.’

She stopped, blushing and perspiring heavily. Grace felt sorry for her. Being a good detective did not mean you were necessarily a confident public speaker. She turned back a page in her notes, as if checking something, then continued, ‘Of interest to Operation Chameleon will be the report that there was no activity from Bishop’s mobile phone from eleven twenty p.m. on Thursday 3 August until six thirty-six a.m. on Friday 4 August.’

‘Can we extrapolate from the information whether it was because Bishop didn’t move during that time period, or, if he did, he had left the phone behind, or that it was switched off?’ Grace asked.

‘I understand that if a phone is on stand-by or in use, it exchanges constant signals with the nearest base station – basically it talks to it, telling the base station where it is. There were a series of signals received from Bishop’s phone from masts sited in London, indicating he was travelling from Piccadilly back to Notting Hill, from approximately eleven to eleven fifteen that night. The last signal was at eleven twenty, from a base station at a mast in Bayswater, west London, close to Notting Hill. The next signals were exchanged at six thirty-six a.m., from the same base station, sir.’

Although that fitted with the times given by Phil Taylor for when Bishop left the Wolseley restaurant, it wasn’t helpful information, Grace realized. Bishop could have turned the phone off, so that his journey to Brighton and back in the middle of the night wouldn’t be plotted on the phone masts; and he could easily argue that he’d switched it off in order to get a night’s sleep without being disturbed. But it was what DC Corbin said next that made him sit up.

‘The movements of Bishop’s phone during Friday 4 August, up until six forty-five p.m., correspond with his story, and what we ourselves know. They show he came straight down from London to the North Brighton Golf Club, and from there he travelled directly to Sussex House. They also plot his journey from here to the Hotel du Vin. Then it appears he switched off his phone between twelve twenty-eight and two seventeen. This coincides with a period of time in which he was reported missing from the Hotel du Vin by WPC Buckley.’

She paused, looking around the silent room. Everyone was watching her, concentrating hard, with notes being taken. Grace gave her a smile of encouragement. She ploughed on.

‘During this same time period, Bishop was sighted on three CCTV cameras. One at the junction of Dukes Lane and Ship Street, just up the road from the Hotel du Vin, one opposite St Peter’s Church in the London Road, and one on Kings Parade, opposite Brighton Pier. The reason he gave for his absence was that he went out for some air.’

‘Seems a bit odd to me,’ Norman Potting said, ‘that both times Bishop does a disappearing act, he switches his phone off.’

Grace nodded, thinking, then signalled for her to continue.

‘From two seventeen until six forty-seven on Friday 4 August, the phone signals remained static, indicating that Bishop stayed in his hotel room. This is consistent with family liaison officer WPC Linda Buckley’s report that Bishop returned to the hotel at around two twenty and was in his room each time she checked up on him, using the house phone, the last time being at six forty-five. Then the phone plot shows that Bishop moved one and a half miles west, which tallies with information obtained by DC Pamela Buckley from taxi driver Mark Tuckwell, who claims he drove Bishop to the Lansdowne Place Hotel at that time. I understand that Hove Streamline Taxis have confirmed this from their log.’ She looked at the female detective constable.

‘Yes, that is correct,’ Pamela Buckley said.

Corbin turned to the next page. ‘Bishop checked into the Lansdowne Place Hotel at five past seven – just over three hours after a member of the hotel reception staff received a phone call from an unidentified male making a reservation for a room for several nights, in Bishop’s name,’ she read.

Grace quickly turned back through his own notes. ‘Bishop claimed that he received a call from a CID officer informing him that he was being moved to a different hotel and that a taxi had been arranged to collect him, from a back entrance. This was so he could leave the hotel without being seen by the press, who were staking the hotel out. He gave the name of this officer as DS Canning – but we have checked and there is no officer called Canning in the Sussex police force.’

‘And is it correct, Adrienne, that there’s no record of any phone call to the Lansdowne Place Hotel being made on Bishop’s mobile phone?’ DCI Duigan asked.

‘That is correct, sir.’ Then she added, ‘The Hotel du Vin have also confirmed that there were no calls made by any of their internal phones to the Lansdowne Place during the time Bishop was there.’

‘When he was out!’ Norman Potting said suddenly, excitedly. ‘When he went on his lunchtime walkabout, he could have bought one of them pay-as-you-go phones and disposed of it later. He could have bought it specifically to make those calls – and others we might not know about.’

‘An interesting thought,’ Grace conceded. ‘A good point, Norman.’

‘The Lansdowne Place Hotel is closer to Sophie Harrington’s home than the Hotel du Vin,’ Duigan said. ‘That might be significant.’

‘I’d like to add one more thought here,’ Grace said. ‘It’s possible that Bishop had an accomplice helping him with his alibi for the night of Mrs Bishop’s murder. The same accomplice could have been responsible for this switch of hotels.’

DCI Duigan said, ‘Roy, we can see the attraction for an accomplice with the murder of Mrs Bishop and the substantial life-insurance policy. Do we have any grounds yet for believing there would have been an accomplice for Bishop in the murder of Sophie Harrington?’

‘No. But it’s early days.’

Duigan nodded and noted something down.

Adrienne Corbin continued with her time-line report. ‘Bishop was observed by staff leaving the hotel at approximately seven thirty. His phone mast plot shows that he then headed west. This was confirmed by a sighting of him on a CCTV camera at the junction of West Street and Kings Parade at five to eight.’

Grace stared at her in shock, for a moment thinking he had misheard. ‘Bishop headed away from the Lansdowne Place Hotel, back in the direction of the Hotel du Vin? A completely different direction from the one he would have had to take to get to Sophie Harrington’s home?’ he grilled her.

‘Yes, sir,’ she replied.

Duigan then stood up and switched on the video monitor. ‘I think everyone should see these,’ he said.

The first showed a colour image of Brian Bishop in Kings Parade, with several people behind him and a bus passing. There was no mistaking his face. He was wearing the clothes Grace remembered from when he interviewed him later that same night – a black blouson jacket over a white shirt and blue trousers. And the sticking plaster on his right hand.

‘What time did your witness reckon she saw Bishop outside Sophie Harrington’s house?’ Grace asked.

Duigan replied, ‘Eight o’clock almost exactly. She knew because a television programme she wanted to watch was just starting.’

‘And she’s now formally identified him?’

‘Yes, this afternoon she came in and carried out an identification procedure. She is absolutely certain it was him.’

‘What clothes does she say Bishop was wearing?’ Grace asked.

‘She says he was in a dark tracksuit – a shell suit of some kind.’

Grace stared at the image of Bishop on the screen. ‘What does anyone think? Could that black blouson jacket and those dark blue chinos be mistaken for a tracksuit?’

Alfonso Zafferone said, ‘It was eight o’clock when she saw Bishop. Old people don’t see dark colours so well, in poor light. I think that blouson jacket could easily be mistaken for a tracksuit top, at that time of day.’

‘Or,’ Guy Batchelor said, ‘Bishop could have pulled on a tracksuit over his clothes, to protect them.’

‘Both good points,’ Grace said. Then he turned his mind back to the time-line. ‘He could have got from Kings Parade to Ms Harrington’s address in ten minutes by taxi.’

Duigan pressed the remote and a second image of Bishop appeared. Now he was down on the seafront itself, with part of the Arches clearly visible in the background, several kayaks on trestles outside the front of one.

Reading on, DC Corbin said, ‘Bishop was sighted again at eight fourteen by a CCTV camera in front of the Arches. The phone mast log indicates Bishop remained static in this area during the next forty-five minutes, and then headed back, west, to his hotel. Two staff members at a seafront bar, Pebbles, have confirmed that he was in their bar from approximately eight twenty to about eight fifty. They said he drank a beer and an espresso and seemed deeply distracted. On several occasions he got up and paced around, then returned and sat down again. They had been concerned he was going to walk off without paying.’

Bella Moy cut in when the DC paused. ‘Roy,’ she said, ‘it almost seems as if he was deliberately trying to get himself noticed.’

‘Yes,’ Grace said. ‘Could be. But equally it’s typical behaviour of someone in a highly agitated state.’

Duigan clicked the remote again. It was darker on the screen now. The image was a rear view of a man who strongly resembled Bishop, in the same place as the earlier photograph, passing along the Arches.

‘At eight fifty-four,’ DC Corbin read on, ‘Bishop was again recorded on the same CCTV camera as at eight fourteen, this time walking in the opposite direction. From the phone mast log we have the information that he headed west again, in the direction of the Lansdowne Place Hotel. A member of the hotel reception staff recalls that Bishop returned to the hotel at approximately nine twenty-five, when she gave him the message that Detective Superintendent Grace had left for him.’ She looked up at Grace. ‘He then rang you at nine thirty.’

‘Yes.’

‘Then he drove up to Sussex House, where Detective Superintendent Grace and DS Branson interviewed him, the interview commencing at ten twenty-two. According to the phone mast plot, Bishop did not leave the hotel until nine forty-nine.’

‘He’d have driven almost past Sophie Harrington’s door on his way from the hotel to here,’ Glenn Branson said.

‘The drive here would have been at least fifteen minutes – I only live half a dozen streets along from the Lansdowne,’ Grace replied. ‘I do the drive every day, at all times of the day and night. It always takes fifteen to twenty minutes. So that would have left him eighteen minutes to kill Sophie Harrington. Impossible, not with what was done to her, all those holes drilled in her back. He couldn’t have done that and cleaned himself up in that time frame.’

‘I agree,’ Duigan said.

‘Which means we have a problem,’ Grace said. ‘Either Bishop didn’t kill Sophie Harrington or he had an accomplice. Or . . .’

He fell silent.

106

Grace went straight from the briefing meeting, past his office, past the mostly empty desks and offices of the detectives’ room and put his head around the door of Brian Cook’s office. He was relieved to see the Scientific Support Branch Manager was still at work.

Cook was on the phone, making what sounded like a private call, but waved him in, cheerily told the person at the other end that he would hold him to that drink and hung up. ‘Roy, has John Pringle contacted you yet about Cleo Morey’s car?’ he asked.

‘No.’

‘I put him on it today – told him to report to you.’

‘Thanks, Brian.’ Changing the subject, Grace said, ‘Tell me something, what do you know about the DNA of twins?’

‘What do you want to know?’

‘How close would the DNA of identical twins be?’

‘It would be identical.’

‘Completely?’

‘One hundred percent. The fingerprints would be different, interestingly. But the DNA would be an exact match.’